


Berceuse

by Devilinthebox (princegrisejoie)



Category: Death Note
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Lullabies, M/M, Nightmares, Psychological Horror, Sleep, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrisejoie/pseuds/Devilinthebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In an attempt to will his nightmares away, he finds himself humming: “Sleep my child and peace attend thee.” It’s a soothing melody, but its charm isn’t enough to dispel his fears. Sleep won’t find him, if  he dreads its  coming. As for peace…. Peace can wait. The nights draws longer and longer."<br/>In which both L and Light dream of a monster named Kira. It cannot end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Berceuse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Halfpromise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfpromise/gifts), [Majora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Majora/gifts).



> Before you go ahead and read this, there are two very special people I would like to thank: mistress-of-layabouts, aka my sister, who came up with the original prompt and translated the major part of my work and Laura (aka youcannotrelight, halfpromise), who has accepted to beta it afterwards. She has been all kinds of lovely to me and may have helped me overcoming my terrible fear of amazing people commenting on my works. Thank you so much to you both. You are truly incredible.
> 
> The original work is called Mares and you can find it on AO3, in French. Embracing what has now become a habit of mine, the title for the English translation is a French word. "Berceuse" means "Lullaby". Sweet, isn't it? Unlike this fic. 
> 
> Now you can read. Enjoy :)

In L's nightmares, Light’s eyes are crimson red, threatening. They carry a harsh judgment.  
  
The sentence? _Death._

L always wakes up at that precise moment, his insatiable curiosity left unfulfilled. How will Kira rid himself of his greatest threat? He never finds the answer in his dreams. He will find out, eventually, when he cannot escape him anymore. Even if Kira has a dark, predatory inclination, it doesn’t mean that he would waste his precious time playing with his prey. Kira is already sick of their little fool’s game. He’s fated to rule, not to play cat and mouse.

L’s dreams don’t lie: the clock is ticking.

An investigation like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s a song sung by many before: the ballad of the great detective and the criminal mastermind. Of course, it’s only natural that L wants nothing more than to continue playing with him, and no one would expect him to be relieved that this is finally coming to an end. So, what is this wave of guilt that overwhelms him when he feels cold despair flood his body? He does not want to turn the page and destroy and bury the monster named Kira.

But he has made a vow - an unbreakable one - that he would free the world of Kira’s presence.   
  
The hunt was thrilling, the prey clever, and the stakes were higher than ever before. It was an incredible challenge. Kira hid in the shadows, and even for an experienced hunter it was nearly impossible to hunt at night. But L did. Against Kira and _for_ Kira, he has gladly risked his life.

And then the hunter saw his prey. He was hunting for so long… and he caught it, almost by chance….

When his eyes are closed, in the dark of the night, it is not Light’s voice that rings in his ear.  
  
Beneath Light’s shaking voice, L overhears the wrath of his nemesis.

In an attempt to will his nightmares away, he finds himself humming: “ _Sleep my child and peace attend thee._ ” It’s a soothing melody, but its charm isn’t enough to dispel his fears. Sleep won’t find him, if he dreads its coming. As for peace…. Peace can wait.

The nights draw longer and longer.

***

“I saw you” says the detective to Kira, each time their paths cross in dreams.

“Catch me, then.”

_Help him, help me._

L doesn’t see a monster. Oh, he’s a worthy adversary, undoubtedly. He’s charismatic, smart and ruthless. Cruelty is his weapon of choice, beauty the face he wears. But he’s a coward, such a coward, and utterly terrified to meet him on battlefield. It’s understandable. Confronting an opponent to fight him on equal footing carries an inherent risk of loss. Kira indulges himself in fantasies of godliness – Gods cannot lose. If he was to suffer even the slightest injury, he would vanish into thin air.

“But haunting you bears no risk whatsoever,” he explains L in his nightmare. “You craft your own nightmares. You invite me, you open the door. Something inside you…wants to feel me closer.”

Each word is chosen with special care. His words are brilliant jewels designed for temptation, but for L, they are nothing more than well-honed weapons. He is determined to be immune to the perfect poetry of his carefully chosen words.

“You invent me, L. And I believe that you make me even more perfect than I am. But you saw me nonetheless. So, help him. Help me.”

He mocks him again and again to the point of chastisement. L provides numerous rational arguments he always forgets when he wakes up. Logic drowns in dreams.

And Kira chants: “You saw me. You lost, you lost.” He looms over him, smothering him with his shadow. He uses his hands, too. He never goes too far, but it’s still enough to leave a dark red mark on his neck.  
  
Later, it is a languorous kiss that hurts like a bite. It’s intoxicating and he loathes himself when he wonders if reality will give him a kiss like this one day. He hates himself when he makes use of his dreams to hold him tight in his arms.

It’s not unhealthy if it’s Light.

“Ah! And you are lost. You’re begging for more? You know you can still give up….”

He feels something break inside of him, like a beast tearing flesh apart. Like a mind torn to shreds.  
  
He wakes, but his dreams are still there. He summons his rationality in vain –what kind of fool believes in dreams anyway? His mind is falling to pieces.

Giving up means losing. It would be leaving Light to be torn by this wild beast’s claws.

When he awakes, Light is looking at him with an expression of sincere worry gracing his features. He extends his hand slightly, reaching for L’s arm or maybe his hair. It’s a heartwarming gesture, meant to comfort him…. but he changes his mind, as always. L  cannot see the demon of his dreams in this adolescent with affected manners. That’s probably why he finds Light’s worry to be more stressful than easing.  Whatever. L prefers this confusion to his tormented dreams.

He gives up on sleeping, which isn't much of a waste. He gives up on dreaming. May he be given a bitter truth rather than those pointless nightmares.

And he still has a war to wage against a very real enemy. Only Kira believes he’s fighting a losing battle.

He will dream again, when this sham of divinity will have bowed before those who refuse to believe in its existence.

Or maybe he will never dream again. It doesn’t matter. It’s worth the fight, as they say.

**  
  
No sleep means no waking up with a start anymore, but that isn't his biggest relief. He has finally escaped this nagging doubt. No, he doesn’t have doubts, unfortunately – it’s more a feeling of sadness. The feeling of frustration that floods him when Light Yagami worries about his nightmare…

He idly thinks that he'd have a better chance of trying to bring the moon down than he would at trying to figure this mess out.

“Why can’t you sleep ?”

Light’s eyes don’t lie, and that is something he is painfully aware of. But one must always be wary of everything that glitters. Illusions adorn themselves in sumptuous and rich colors because their survival depends on their appeal. A detective doesn’t pursue mirages, and especially not this one. Why trust your instinct when you have evidence? It’s the easy way out. That being said, if he had true, solid evidence, he would have already won the war.

L pretended not to hear him, but Light is not one to give up easily: “Why can’t you sleep?”

“Unfinished business.”

L is too proud to accept a partial victory. Kira is not the kind of enemy you can hold with handcuffs. He is an evil that must be destroyed. Kira’s head on a silver plate: it was his promise.

Ah, it can only end badly.

**

L gave up on sleeping so he can listen to the dreams of others. At night, he looks upon Light in silence.

He’s amused to find out that the young man talks in his sleep, and his most trivial words manage to make L smile. He even managed to forget Kira for a while. Should he thank Light for filling the long hours of his sleepless nights?

Wrapped in the night, the silhouettes of both the dreamer and the beholder seem motionless. Soon, one can no longer perceive two breaths: one became the echo of the other.

The slightest movement makes the handcuffs click. It is but a slight crystalline sound, almost pleasant. Imperceptible by day but revealed by the silent night. It would be so easy to forget what they mean and what his purpose is.  _You're supposed to monitor him, L._

He is surprised to find himself looking for a meaning in Light’s whispers. A hopeless final resort, probably. What if it was the only way to understand his foe ? Light may have forgotten everything, but Kira had been living in him. Maybe his presence leaves traces and clues that he, L, would be able to steal? No. Probably not. Dreams - the sacred way to the truth? He is ashamed to have even entertained the idea. One cannot force oneself into someone’s mind to decipher dreams.

No regrets. He will find another way to win.

"I'm sorry,"it is his own voice he hears, a weak murmur lost into the night.

Light’s spirit is embedded in the unconscious, only his body remains. _His body, or a hiding place_. Kira hides behind the one who was willing to dedicate his body to his cause. L feels a sour taste in his mouth that leaves him craving for sweets.

No regrets. There is no way to win anymore.

He settled himself back into work when an old dream came back to haunt him.

He only remembers a sentence, but it makes him smile. For once, it is not an arrow sent by his treasured enemy. No, it is the detective’s answer to the killer.

“You are nothing, Kira. Nothing more than the leftovers of an melancholic adolescent’s phantasms.”

He doesn’t remember Kira’s answer. Maybe there wasn’t one.

**  
  
“Do you have nightmares?”

“Quite often.”

Light answers straight away - he doesn’t even think about lying. The question is sincere. It’s a rare occurrence between them.  
  
Light decrypts the tones of L's voice. The melody is enticing, the concern is not a false note. On the contrary, he cherishes this concern because he knows he will never see it again.

This must be the feeling of inhaling oxygen after drowning.

"And you, what keeps you from sleeping? Unfinished business? Really?”

He takes the time to think before saying anything. Their eyes lock and he can only tell the truth.

"Nightmares.”

Light smiled weakly. "So you think you cannot help me, don’t you?”  


The shadow of intense emotion darkened L’s eyes.

Then he said: "I know a lullaby. Lullabies soothe the mind. They create an illusion of reassurance before a dreaded separation. Please, close your eyes.”

He sits cross-legged on the bed and begins to sing. Sometimes Light dares to open an eye and L pretends to give him a reproving look.

“ _I see the moon and the moon sees me_

_God bless the moon and God bless me_

_Please let the light that shines on me_

_Shine on the one I love._ ”

His voice breaks, no more than an imperceptible tremor on the last sentence. He realizes that he resents Light for not being the monster he believed he was hunting.

And he resents himself…oh, he is furious with himself.

If it was a game, he would demand that they stop playing immediately. Time to put away toys. It’d be insanely easy to claim that the rules were broken and proclaim the end of the game. It’s a draw. Everyone lives.

However, even in this case, would he accept defeat?

*

Light thinks he is waking up – breathless and trembling. But this is part of the nightmare, once again: a dream full of ghosts he won’t remember in the morning.

“ _God bless the moon and God bless me_.” But to which God is L devoted to? Is he waiting for _me_ to bless him?

Light is facing Kira and there is only the endless, suffocating night around them. He can hear his voice but doesn’t recognize it.

“I’ve already blessed you,” Kira whispers; a threat disguised as words of tenderness. Light instinctively translates it: ‘ _you are mine’_. Kira never pronounced the words. He doesn’t need to.

“I am not Kira,” Light answers. He is mostly speaking to himself.

Kira is not his reflection, not a monster, not even a ghost. He is an illusion – the bearer of a utopia. He feeds on impossible dreams and childish fears. His oxygen? Faith. He needs others to believe in him. He needs Light.

Kira will die as soon as they capture and chain him. The world will cease to adore him, for who worships a humiliated divinity? Kira becomes a half-remembered deity and Light surfaces at last, relishing each breath of fresh air. Free of doubt and with no reason to fear mirrors anymore. Oh, and how delightful will it be to find L and tell him: “See, I told you so!”

In the middle of a nightmare, Light inexplicably feels relief.

A confused memory of a lullaby crosses his mind, and then…

In a flash, Kira appears to Light as a deformed image of himself. He is standing so close to him now, his fingers buried deep like fangs in the back of his neck. Lightning makes his eyes glow vermilion. Nothing like his own. It should be reassuring. ‘The eyes may be different, but the rest…’ some voice hisses inside of him.

Light feels stupid to have believed he could win against his own creation. We cannot escape the monsters we create for ourselves. Why would he want to let go of Kira? He chose this existence when he offered Light Yagami as the first sacrifice in the name of Kira. There wasn’t any chase – not even a fight – between them, only an exchange: here is a body for you. Accomplish the dreams he is too powerless to pursue. I give you carte blanche.

All he asked in return was to be present for the final act. Their new world.

So, why haunt him, of all people?

‘ _L_ is your Nemesis. Your enemy. Why come to me? ‘

Do Gods bend down and talk to their offerings? No. _L_ would know just how to fight Kira, Light convinces himself. There must be a way, but he cannot see it. Kira is not some evil spirit. Hope and witty comebacks won’t do.

How did L used to put it? Ah, yes: he is an immature charmer, a smooth-talker who cannot handle defeat and a man who dresses as a god so he won’t fear the dark anymore. That is what Kira is. Or is that Light? Is that him and _only him_?

‘L grasped you perfectly…’ Kira whispers in his ear. He is so close that it seems his voice comes from Light’s own body. ‘…But he cannot stop me. I have no weakness. You kept them all for me and you gave me everything useful you possessed.’

His voice shivers with excitement. With each step forward that Kira takes, Light shudders. It is horrifying to realize he just won’t disappear. He has the right to stay. He is home.

‘I could even have used your pretty face to seduce L. Who knows? It might have worked. Don’t give me that look. I did try but you are right, he is just too _diligent_. Or…or he cannot see you. He only sees me, whom he hates. You…he doesn’t even _know_ you. ‘

Light tries to protest but the words are stuck in his throat. And that noise, that noise – everything revolves around Kira – and there is only his voice and his constant teasing left.

‘L doesn’t know you, but you aren’t missing much. He locked himself in an ivory tower. How can he ever understand how you feel? What you are willing to offer to the world? You and me, we both know. You trusted me and I freed you of such a heavy burden... I’ll return soon to thank you, dear benefactor.’

‘You don’t have to _kill_ him. Let me think, just let me…We could find another way –‘

‘You are such a coward, Light Yagami! I believe our goal is worth the sacrifice of someone who keeps on labelling you as a mere _criminal_! I will kill him for you, if you want. Just look.’

The dark that enfolded them vanishes and Light is allowed to see L’s body.

He knows it is only a nightmare, no matter how lifelike it feels. Everything seems too real. It may be the future, a vision of the world he longed for. _This is not supposed to feel like this. This is not what I meant –I wanted to…_

‘Work with him, maybe? This is not your destiny: a life in the shadows! You were made for the light. Oh, look at him. He died in my arms. He is dead and you killed him! The only obstacle left! Are you going to cry? Will you keep vigil over him? He knew his life was at stake! You don’t oppose a God, Light! You don’t oppose a God, you hear me?!’

Every word is a dagger piercing his skin, relentlessly and mercilessly stabbing him. To see L dying in the arms of that monster, ah…

With a sound as strident as silverware smashed on the floor, Light opens his eyes. He can hear the impossible echo of shattered glass and senses someone calling for him, but he cannot get a hold on reality; it keeps slipping through his fingers. He doesn’t know how long he tries to wake up and desperately fight the dream. If only he could wake up. All he feels is distress. All he has left is dread before what is about to happen.

*

‘My lullaby certainly didn’t live up to our expectations, did it?’

Light has no choice but to agree.

‘This is not your fault’ he says, hoping to sound comforting.

They both know who is responsible. They both carry him with them: L’s obsession and Light’s shadow.

So, they continue to hunt down Kira relentlessly, trying not to let themselves be blinded by their nightmares and convinced the show has not yet been written, told and played. In silence, a multitude of wishes are made. If we win, I swear I will…The number of promises that are waiting for the investigation to end…

But before that, Light seizes L’s wrist. ‘Regardless of the ending, whether it’s a defeat or a victory, you know we will share it, don’t you?’

He makes the handcuffs tinkle. The point is made _. If you die, I disappear._

Light feels L’s pulse accelerate under his fingers. The detective must have realised that, as he takes a step back. He smiles in a way Light never guessed he was capable of.

‘Who said we could be defeated?’

*

Months later, it is L’s turn to haunt a God, and not only in his dreams. Always, between dawn and dusk, Kira feels his presence.

Sometimes, L observes him, cold and inflexible as a judge. Kira feels hunted. From time to time, Kira senses a look full of regrets trying to pierce his skin, and he feels powerful. 

But there will always be this void he cannot fill : this unbearable absence, this…disease Light is to be blamed for. He has to stop mourning.

They will get by. Kira is not afraid of the dark and certainly doesn’t fear ghosts and painful memories. It was only a lullaby.

Please let the light that shines on me  
Shine on the one I love

A melody made sublime by his missing piece – the one who completed him. An echo destined to bring him to his senses.

   



End file.
